The rapid growth in demand for pork in Viet Nam presents an opportunity for rural swine keeping
households to improve their incomes. However, despite the fact that a large proportion of
livestock production in Viet Nam still comes from smallholder production systems that generally
have limited access to markets, inputs, and livestock services, government policy favours the
development of large commercial livestock production of pigs intended for the export market,
through investment and other incentives. If the reduction of rural poverty is one of the main
policy goals, then there is a need to better integrate the rural smallholder producers into the
growth process to enable them to capture some of its benefits. One possibility of closer
integration would be through institutional arrangements that provide smallholders better access
to markets and livestock services.
In partnership with national and international research institutions, PPLPI initiated a field
research project entitled ‘Contract Farming for Equitable Market-Oriented Smallholder Swine
Production in Northern Viet Nam’ to identify forms of contract farming of swine that allow
smallholder producers to benefit from the rapidly changing production environment. The ultimate
objective is to identify a set of policy and intervention options for the facilitation of profitable,
market-oriented livestock farming partnerships between smallholders and larger enterprises.
This brief report summarizes initial findings on the typology of contracts between different market
actors on northern Viet Nam.